thoughts on faith, justice, politics and philosophy

Author: Ben Treadaway
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I write this as the news from across the pond sinks in about their government shut-down. Whilst the reasons behind the shut-down are complex, one thing is certainly true: in a political system designed to require compromise (a 2/3rds majority, in the case of their budget), compromise is ever further from senators’ grasps.

We seem to be living in an ever polarising world. I too am guilty of this. Since Brexit I have hardened my heart towards people whom I know to hold rightwing views – I hold them responsible for what I believe are the fallacies that encouraged millions of people to vote for a back-door to ditching regulation and human rights.

Yet I find myself constantly reminded that I am – we are – called not to judge others, but to love them. Love is hard. But as Jesus said: “Love your enemies […] If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?”

Not only does Jesus call us to love them, but he calls us to actively work with and for them! Consider this:

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[h]39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. […]If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. – Matthew’s gospel, Chapter 5

The brief context for this is that Roman soldiers often demanded – and had a legal right to demand – that a Jewish citizen carry their possessions for them for a mile, to give them a rest. Why on earth would Jesus encourage that – and suggest going another mile? Well, there’s a power dynamic at play here. By going the extra mile for them, you would be not only jeopardising their job (it would cause them to break the law!) but also showing up and making them look greedy.

Subversion is fantastic.

But on the way, whilst you journey with them, you might begin to understand the stress they’re under, you might find out that they’re exhausted, tired, fed up with their commanders demands – and be glad you’re helping to carry their backpack, in some small way.

You might also wince at their imperialist views, views Jewish intelligence, or find it hard to hear about how they treat their women, or your God.

You might find that despite all this, they’re hilarious. That they have an unerring devotion to their partner, and to their children. That actually, they’re really not very secure – which might explain some of their views – and that they just want to know love, peace and grace.

Fortunately for them, you follow Jesus, and that’s what he talks about all the time. If there’s one thing you know a lot about, it’s how to experience love, peace and grace.

Let’s bring ourselves back to the here and now. My point is this: if we take the time to get to know those whom we oppose, dislike… maybe even despise, then we might find enough in common with them to learn to love them. And that love might lead to a friendship – or at the very least some kind of relational experience – which can lead to the exchange of ideas and values – the greatest of which is love.

Too often we shout at others from the sidelines. Wether it’s the “idiots” who voted for Brexit, the “bigots” who oppose aspects of who we are, the “ignorant” atheists who want to destroy our belief systems, the “power hungry” politicians, the “selfish” bankers. Each and everyone of them, just like us, have their own belief systems – often given to them from a young age – and insecurities – gathered over a lifetime.

I’m saddened to see the way that the world treats those who aren’t part of the “enlightened liberal” crowd that I and most of my friends and acquaintances find ourselves.

The vitriol given to religious people who are “behind the times” is one that has stuck out to me recently. Yes, their views are abhorrent. Yes, their attitudes are based on an understanding of the Bible that we think we’ve moved on from. But what we shouldn’t do is use that to allow them to continue to be an ‘enemy’. Especially for those of us who, like me, share with them a faith – wether we like that or not!

As Jesus said, “love your enemies”.

That means drawing on the peace, grace and love that we have found in our own walk with God, and using it to help us to treat others with love and respect, even when they don’t deserve it. I am fully aware that I say this as a straight, white, wealthy man – unburdened by the hurt that a lot of religious conservatism has caused – but equally I don’t think that the experience of the love, grace and peace of God was meant only for someone like me! And I believe it is that which empowers us to do and be more than we would have imagined.

Just like the teaching of the soldier and the extra mile, we might find ourselves with someone we wouldn’t normally cross paths with – and they (or even we) might become all the richer for journeying with them.

The likes of Steve Chalke, Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo… and other prominent Evangelical names, have in recent years all talked about how they were brought up with the view that homosexuality is wrong. They’ve all since changed their minds – and in one case in their eighth decade! Why? because they have met people, they have seen the suffering caused by their views, and they have changed their views accordingly.

A friend of mine once commented on the name of this blog. He said that the important part of the phrase wasn’t the nowhere/now here debate (if you hadn’t spotted that already, take a moment. Nice, isn’t it?) but that both of them began with the same two words.

God is.

For a long time I’ve indulged myself in writing about interesting/nuanced/convoluted/complex/difficult issues, struggles, topics and ideas that myself or others have had.

It’s been a lot of fun.

But it’s time for a break. Feel free to read through my journey so far. Until further notice, I’ll be blogging over at my new address: http://www.seekingsimplicity.co.uk. If you read my post over there, you’ll understand why. I hope you’ll be up for joining me on the next stage of my journey.

If at this point you and I go our separate ways, if only for a while, then thank you for taking the time to read and engage with my thoughts here.

I want to talk about my favourite Bible verse. It’s one of a few you’ll find in both the Jewish scriptures and in the New Testament. I’m cheating, of course: the verse in question is one that Jesus quotes from the Jewish scriptures. It’s this, from Mark’s gospel:

“The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.”

Or, if you prefer from Matthew’s gospel

“The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

On the surface, this looks like a statement from Jesus basically belittling what many demean as the “social gospel”. He’s saying that yes, it’s a shame there are poor people; but, well, focus instead on your relationship with God.

I’ve had two or three conversations recently where I’ve heard variations on this, ranging from confusion through to excuse. It’s confusing, of course, because in all kinds of other parts of scripture, God – in both human form and otherwise – actively campaigns for the plight of the poor and compels us to do something about their circumstance.

The rational explanation seems to be that Jesus is saying – look, the poor are there, you can’t do that much about it, so focus on me instead.

As usual, there’s a better explanation than the conventional wisdom. And that better explanation comes from – as always – context.

Jesus is doing the equivalent of a shorthand reference. Much like when you or I might half-use an idiom, such as “nailed it” (from “hit the nail on the head”, meaning, getting it exactly) – we know what we mean at each stage because it conforms to a series of cultural norms.

Jesus is not saying something new or original. He’s quoting Deuteronomy 15:

“There should be no poor among you, for the LORD your God will greatly bless you in the land he is giving you as a special possession. You will receive this blessing if you are careful to obey all the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today. The LORD your God will bless you as he has promised. You will lend money to many nations but will never need to borrow. You will rule many nations, but they will not rule over you.

“But if there are any poor Israelites in your towns when you arrive in the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward them. Instead, be generous and lend them whatever they need. Do not be mean-spirited and refuse someone a loan because the year for canceling debts is close at hand. If you refuse to make the loan and the needy person cries out to the LORD, you will be considered guilty of sin. Give generously to the poor, not grudgingly, for the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do. The poor you will always have with you. That is why I am commanding you to share freely with them and with other Israelites in need.

What Jesus is doing is evoking the spirit of this passage. Now, we need to look at the original story in context, too:

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper,a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked.“This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial.Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

I will admit that on first reading, I’m a bit puzzled by what Jesus is saying. He does seem to be suggesting that they should focus on him and not those in need. But if we read this along with the passage he is quoting we get a much clearer picture.

In the Deuteronomic text, we see God getting progressively more disparaging about the chances that the Israelites have of looking after those in need. He starts off with “there should be no poor”, moves on to “if” and then finally ends with “the poor you will always have with you”. In line with this, God pleads more and more intently with the Israelites to look after those in poverty.

So when Jesus says this, he’s evoking this whole passage – written in the context of freedom from debt and slavery – to a people just freed from debt and slavery – reminding them that helping the poor is such a vital part of the mission of God.

I also think there’s something else a little more subtle going on here. Jesus often rebuked the pharisees by turning their attacks on their heads. I think he’s doing the same here. The disciples think they’ve got the hang of Jesus’ teaching – so they jump in to the situation and suggest what seems like the obvious answer. Jesus reminds them of their obligation to the poor – likely reminding them of how much of a failure their society is in that regard – and reminds them that for as long as he is around, everything is a bit different. Of course they should prioritise Jesus, just like the woman does.

The big difference for us today is that we don’t have Jesus here with us in bodily form. We don’t need to use expensive perfume to prepare him for burial or to fill his churches with while we prepare for mass. We don’t have the same context as the disciples in this very particular regard. So instead we must rely on other scripture, and indeed the original passage in Deuteronomy, to guide our thinking around those less fortunate than us.

This is the same Jesus, after all, who told one man named Nicodemus to go and be born again (which we’re all told we need to do) but told the rich young ruler, and his disciples, to sell their possessions and give their money to the poor – as a prerequisite to following him and finding the Kingdom of Heaven. But to quote Rich Mullins, that’s why God invented highlighters – so we could ignore the bits we don’t like.

The church service I regularly attend doesn’t have a sermon. Instead, we take ten minutes to be silent. That’s quite a change from growing up listening to half hour sermons and enjoying loud and highly emotive sung worship. And for the last few weeks I’ve had to really wrestle with myself to keep going.

Today I almost didn’t, until the reason why became clear. I had managed to convince myself of various different reasons, all of which have some truth in them (otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to convince myself).

The first of these was boredom: silence is boring especially when God doesn’t say anything in it. Then I realised that it wasn’t necessarily that God wasn’t saying anything, but that I wasn’t listening.

Then, I decided that I wasn’t listening because I needed something different. I needed a sermon: something to engage and challenge me. I needed something that my extroversion could interact with.

All of this has been going on in my internal thoughts for the last two or three months. So tonight I decided: why not go back to the familiar? I’ve been meaning to go and see what the local charismatic church is like for some time, so why not? Sure, I know – just like every other time I do this – it will probably leave me feeling frustrated, alienated and angry. But it’s got to be better than the numb anxiety that the silence induces, right?

In talking this over with my better half, I realised that at the root of all of this wasn’t so much that I was bored, or that it doesn’t suit me. It was this: I am scared of encountering my true self.

I love a good “worship session”. It has a sort of nostalgic glow to it: the feel-good factor of all that singing and loud noise and emotional guitar and teary eyed backing vocalists and…

Noise.

So. Much. Noise.

In that noise, I can drown out everything that I don’t want to hear and hear only that which I do want to hear. So it’s not surprising that those are the environments in which people most often (claim to) hear from God; because we all want that.

What’s much, much more frightening is having to spend ten minutes with myself. Wether or not God is present. In that ten minutes I am forced to remember so many things I would rather forget: I am anxious, I am broken, I am fragile, I am scared, I am worried, I am paranoid, I am useless, I am awkward, I am so many things I would rather forget.

I am loved.

That one hit me like a ton of bricks just now. I’ve been doing the silence all wrong. I’ve been using it like some beaten down Christian who has just said the confession and remembered all of their sinful nature and all of their horrible characteristics. “I know I shouldn’t be that way, but I am that way.” And then I dwell on it.

The problem with unguided silence is that it allows those of us with a predisposition for depression and negative thinking (my CBT counselling used to call this ‘warpy thoughts’ which I’ve always found to be simultaneously both moderately insulting and amusingly fair and accurate) to perpetuate these myths freely. Then they spiral deeper and deeper into my perception of myself so that next week I come back needing to unravel yet more negativity, only to pile more on.

So, I thought, should I not go? Does the silence only cause me harm, right now? But the thing is, that isn’t the fault of the silence. The silence only exposes me to myself. And I only have three choices: avoid myself, defy myself, or permit myself.

So far I’ve been avoiding myself. Mobile phones really can do wonders for distraction and diversion – as can a pen and paper, or indeed an ornate stained glass window if the other two fail to be of significant enough interest. But all that’s done is left me feeling more and more frustrated.

Defying myself hasn’t worked either. If I sit there and try to just listen, or breathe, all I can do is realise just how physically anxious I am (for reasons other than all of this); just how alone I am; just how silent God seems. I can’t force myself to be positive. I lack both the energy and emotional will right now.

What I can do, what I have thus far failed to do, is to permit myself. The story of God seems to be one of a relentless pursuit of unconditional love. And I have experiences that tell me that God loves me – and other experiences that tell me that I am not an awful person. Experiences that tell me I am fun, friendly, interesting (It’s amazing how hard it can be to write a list of positive attributes about oneself and not cringe for a good five minutes afterward) – and so on.

I could, if I so chose, dwell on those instead. That’s not an easy challenge, but it is a worthwhile one. I cannot change who I am – at least not overnight. I cannot force myself to stop being anxious or to have the attention span of a wise old monk. But I can start to be kind to myself and to allow myself to be me. Even if it is only for ten minutes a week.

This last week I had someone email me referring to a situation that I am heavily involved in – and indeed responsible for – as “a shame in every sense of the word”. I won’t go into the situation itself, mainly for personal reasons but also for sake of confidentiality. But it made me realise something.

I struggle with shame. A lot.

A huge amount of my childhood memories are the kind that bring the rush of blood that comes with the feeling of embarrassment. Often they’re really stupid, little things. Like the time I for no apparent reason refused to ask to be let down from the table at my Aunt’s house and ended up spending ages sat there feeling confused at myself. I look back on it and I think “I have no idea” why I did that. But, well, I was about 6.

Or there’s the time that I repeated a joke from a birthday card to my mum’s friend who was stood chatting to her in Tesco – that I naively didn’t realise was a pun of a very sexual nature. Of course, it dawned on me fairly quickly – but too late to save me from that all too familiar feeling.

The funny thing about those two memories is that while I can to a large extent rationalise the emotions and see myself in a kinder light, I find it hard not to wish I could just go back in time and fix them. I felt this way too about the events of the last week. They’ve left me unable to concentrate, unable to focus well, and generally meant that I’ve felt disappointed in myself and ashamed of my actions.

The upshot of all of this is that my anxiety, which had calmed down hugely, shot through the roof again. And all, ultimately, because of shame.

Guilt?

I think for a long time I’ve confused shame with guilt. My friend Alan, an author and theologian, spoke about this with me in the pub once. There’s quite a subtle difference. Guilt is that feeling you get when you know you’ve done something wrong – or, more accurately, when someone points it out to you. In my particular scenario I had managed to find excuses for why I did what I did. And they were great, until I was called out on them.

But what happened next was that I couldn’t let go of the guilt. I read the email over, and over, and over again. Until it made me hate myself. It was like I wanted to feel guilty, for some reason. But that repeated guilt, that’s shame.

Shame is what happens when we prolong guilt beyond its remit. Guilt is what you feel when you have an affair. Shame is what you feel when you’re reminded of it every day. Jesus had a thing or two to say about that in his encounter with the adulterous woman, and I think it’s a great example of a couple of things:

Firstly, shame is not OK

Shame is not OK. Get that in your head. If you’re anything like me, that’s a hard pill to swallow. I quite like being down on myself and beating myself up when I do wrong. It’s an easy way of channeling the emotions. But it’s not good. It leads us to continually regret something that we cannot change. And it leads to us feeling helpless.

The reality, of course, is quite different – we can acknowledge our guilt and then we can go about making amends.

Secondly, it’s not OK to shame someone else

Of course, our making amends might not be received at all. Certainly that’s what has happened in my case. I have started to work on making thing right (not least because the person concerned is not the only beneficiary of what I was doing), but it certainly feels as though the door has already been shut.

The key part of the Jesus story above, for me, is that she knows she has done wrong. And now she’s being publicly humiliated for it in what her society thinks is some kind of just punishment. But Jesus steps in and levels the playing field. He reminds her accusers that not one of them is free from cock-ups themselves. And they all disappear. Because we all know we’re not perfect, and when we’re confronted with that, we usually soften up a bit.

Once and for all

We know that the Christian narrative is one of the removal of guilt, right? I’m less sure that’s true – I think it’s more a removal of shame. Jesus doesn’t suggest at any point that we can become guilt free. As Paul says, “shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? by no means!” We’re not presented with a reality where we can just pray for forgiveness and automatically feel no more guilt. If we can manage that, then we didn’t feel guilty enough in the first place.

Guilt is good. Guilt is what makes us recognise we’ve done wrong. It’s shame that Jesus comes to do away with.

We see this consistently in his life, teaching and crucifixion. In Jesus’ life, he has many encounters with those shamed by society – the woman in the story above, the tax collector, the woman with the perfume, to name just 3 examples. In his teaching, he reminds us to forgive others as we would like to be forgiven. And in his crucifixion, he removes the perceived need to make continual sacrifices for all of our constant wrong-doing.

My situation still doesn’t feel great. I find it hard to accept that there’s no need to feel ashamed because I’m constantly hoping for affirmation from the person involved. But I have to move away from that, because no matter how hard I try – they may never change. But I can. We all can. Shame, and its perpetuation, is something I see so much of in my friends and family, yet it is not a welcome part of the Kingdom of God.

I’ve seen far too many Christians, some who are very dear and close to me, perpetuate shame in the name of God, usually in the name of condemning some sort of sin. We forget all to easily that sin condemns itself with its consequences. But we are called to be a people of grace. So let’s lift those consequences a little, shall we?

In today’s post I want to talk about our willingness to hold, suspend and ignore belief in favour of knowledge, facts and truth – and why it doesn’t make much sense to me.

Closed hand, open mind?

I wonder if you have ever come across the concept of “closed hand” and “open hand” theology? The basic idea is that there are some ideas which cannot be negotiated (closed hand) and some which can (open hand). For example, Jesus being the Son of God would be considered “closed hand” by most Christians, but creationism is considered “open hand” by most – in this country anyway. “Open hand” ideas can be held more lightly than “closed hand” ones.

In my years of deconstructing my faith I started to tear down all of the open hand ideas that I had, and followed swiftly with the closed hand ideas – I’m not sure any longer about penal substitution, the existence of the devil, the idea that anybody is condemned to hell, and so on.

I have also found myself increasingly willing to accept scientific and situational explanations for everything. Feeding 5000? sharing food previously kept selfishly. Walking on water? stepping stones. Demon possession? a crude and offensive depiction of epilepsy. Jesus’ death on the cross as atonement? symbolism.

So my closed hand has become smaller and smaller as my mind has become more and more “open” – or so it would seem to a someone both liberal and cerebral.

The thing about belief is that there’s got to be a point to it. Otherwise we’re just creating a fantasy world for the sake of it. Now, questions of truth aside for a moment – let us consider the way in which we believe.

The term “suspension of disbelief” was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a philosopher-poet. Loosely, it refers to the willingness of human beings to pretend something to be true in spite of one’s doubts, for the sake of enjoyment and happiness.

Ever been to a church? sounds familiar doesn’t it. People pushing aside obvious explanations in favour of more convoluted ones used to support their pre-existing idea of God: healing that doesn’t seem miraculous; coincidences that seem like, well, coincidences. That sort of thing. All the while covered under the blanket protection from any kind of critique: “you just don’t have enough faith”.

This kind of approach makes many people, myself included, want to suspend our belief – not our disbelief. We want to explain everything as rational so that it doesn’t seem quite so, well, crazy…

A healthier approach to belief

Whilst I do happen to think that the kind of church context I’ve just described is all-too-common; I think we can end up taking it too far. If we deconstruct everything, we have nothing left to build on.

Let’s say for a minute that, like me, you are inclined to believe in God. But not just God – the God who also sent Jesus to the earth. Jesus then explains to all of his followers that God is love and that fundamentally we must love God, ourselves and one another.

Let’s stop it there. Because after that, it gets complicated, doesn’t it?

I come from an Evangelical background where the “closed hand” extends beyond here into Jesus’ death, resurrection, and the afterlife [and curiously ignores a lot of his social teaching – but that’s for another day]. Yet I now find myself in a Liberal context where each of those things are held as a very much open question.

I want to suggest that there’s a healthy way of discerning between what we choose to explain, and what we choose to believe. I think it comes down to the question of why we want to explain everything away.

For me, the answer to that question is insecurity. What if I am wrong? What if God isn’t real? perhaps if I reduce God down to something lesser – a God who does not perform miracles; a God who does not intervene; a God who does not raise from the dead – perhaps then I don’t have to be so insecure about my beliefs. My doubts will be lessened because there will be less to doubt in the first place.

So back to my earlier thread – let’s say God is real, etc. Why wouldn’t I want to believe that there’s a life to come, that Jesus is coming back, and that he raised from the dead and that we will raise with him? Why wouldn’t I believe that God incarnate could walk on water, heal the sick, fight evil and so on?

Because it’s too hard to believe some of those things in an ever secularized world where I can alienate myself more and more from the stories of faith found in the circles where disbelief has been well and truly suspended. Perhaps, just perhaps, I am throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

After all. I believe in God. I believe that there is something beyond this. This is not all there is. There’s more.

I believe that somehow, somewhere, there’s more than meets the eye to this universe and its stories and tales and myths and legends and science and faith and – all of it. There’s more. Moreover, I believe that this “God” has a way to interact with us and chose very specifically to be a part of the world in Jesus.

Pretty wacky stuff, isn’t it? So, why wouldn’t I go a bit further and believe in heaven, hell, resurrection, and so on?

That’s the question I find I am constantly now asking myself. I have no answer other than to respond by choosing to recognise that I’ve already come this far. So I might as well go that bit further.

There’s always a catch

Of course, there are 2 significant critiques to this that I can’t let be ignored. The first is that this all falls down if we take away the idea that God is the Judeo-Christian God. Of course that’s true. I happen to believe in that God because I believe that God has had an impact on my life; because I have seen patterns; because I have come to believe that it is that God who is talked about in the Bible and that I have had similar experiences.

I cannot prove what I believe. That’s why it is called belief and not knowledge. But I can decide to believe it – that’s my prerogative. You may disagree if you wish!

Secondly, where does this leave our critique of the church and its willful suspension of disbelief? I think there are a couple of things here. Primarily, suspension doesn’t excuse terrible theology. Just because you want to say something is true because it is “written in scripture” and you happen to have a very particular way of seeing it – does not make it true.

I don’t mean to pick on a particular ideology, but if we take the example of creationism: It’s a poem, written as a description of the idea that God made everything on purpose. It’s not meant to be a treatise on the development of species across the globe.

The other upshot of suspension of belief is that it leaves no room for doubt. Doubt is a vital part of our journey of faith. Doubt and faith are not opposites. Faith and knowledge are opposites. Doubt is a sign that our brains have not ceased to engage with a topic. Doubt is a sign that we are open to new ideas and ways of being, to change, to improvement, to a better understanding of the world around us.

Doubt is fundamentally good. And yet it is sidelined and ignored by a great many in the world of Christendom.

And so…

I have come to the conclusion that faith and knowledge need to remain separate – and that doubt is incredibly useful a tool in this. I have also come to the conclusion that if I am not willing to eliminate my belief in the God if Jesus, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, then I ought to consider accepting some of the rest of the story.

Why wouldn’t I want there to be a new earth, where God reconciles all things, where there is no more pain, suffering, poverty, disease, hunger and torture? Why wouldn’t I want to see those who lived all to short a life given life eternal? Why wouldn’t I want to have belief in the idea that the blind could see and the deaf could hear and the mute could talk?

“Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

The quotation above is from a story of a madman told by Friedrich Nietzsche. Its purpose is to illustrate the notion that we have murdered God in our minds, that we no longer have a place or a need for God in our world.

This Good Friday I want to invite you to imagine something with me. Imagine a world where there is a God. That might even be a difficult first step for some of you reading this; but bear with me.

Imagine a world where there is a God – a God who is unseen yet seen, unheard yet heard, a God who cares about each individual person and loves them without condition. The kind of God you’d want to believe in.

Now I want you to imagine that God as a person. And that person living on this earth and showing others what it looks like to live in harmony with God and with the world around them.

Think about what it would be like to be around them. Perhaps you might even choose to learn from them, to follow their teaching, to subscribe to their news feed, to listen to their podcast, to read their news columns, to go to their events and even, if we were lucky, sit at the meal table with them and enjoy their company.

We know our politicians can’t bring us the hope we want; we don’t trust our religious institutions, we know corporations can’t help us and stuff can’t satisfy us. We know military might and space exploration give us purpose only short lived. We know that none of these things offer true hope of change, of a better world.

But this person – this godperson – they are making their mark and you’ve got this feeling you can’t explain. It’s that thing in your gut that says this, this is different. I can feel it. I believe in them.

How great would that be. To have that feeling. To know that person. How great would that be for you – and not just for you but for those who you know need them so more more than even you, in your darkest moments, do.

Now imagine that a bunch of people who the God-person pissed off had them killed. How much lesser a world? How much worse? How much less hopeful? How much less desirable than the alternative?

Yet this is what we choose to do in our hearts and minds each day. Nietzsche was right. God is dead, and God remains dead. To many of us, most of the time.

You’d expect at this point that I might try and wrap this story up with some kind of happy ending. But I won’t because actually, God is dead to us. And we killed him. We made him unnecessary, unimportant, redundant. And we’re okay with that and I want us to think about why we’re OK with it. And, well, the ending… that’s a story for another day. It’s important to sit in the midst of the darkness, and fully appreciate it.

Those of you who have told me you enjoy my writing will be pleased to know that I’ve given up not blogging for lent. I’m going to write a post every 2-3 days, starting with a 10 part series based on what I used to call “The Omega Course”, challenging a series of commonly held orthodoxies in the Christian faith.

I wanted to begin by examining one of my least favourite entries in the Christianese dictionary: “The Bible is the Word of God”. It’s a phrase we’re probably all very familiar with; but one which in my opinion has some dangerous connotations.

Let’s begin by looking at what the Bible is. Bear with me if this seems a little basic, but it’s worth going over.

Half is a collection of writings from an ancient near eastern culture

Half is a collection of writings from a slightly-less-ancient, Hellenized version of that culture

A set of stories from a range of people in a range of different situations, each with their own particular contexts, bias, opinion and background.

Not something that claims to be handed down word for word by God to man

At least half of it is considered to be “scripture” (according to Paul, and indeed Jesus)

Now, most historical sources for anything other than religious belief are taken with a pinch of salt. They are read in context and balanced out by alternative perspectives. Not so with the current way we are taught to read of the Bible.

Myth One: The Bible is Different
Of course, we know that in 2 Timothy, it is written that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. For one thing, this is only referring to the Old Testament anyway, which rules out the idea that the new testament was considered by the writers at the time to be ‘scripture’. Taking the idea that the Old Testament is indeed “scripture”, then we must examine briefly what is meant by that.

The word for “scripture” in the Greek text is (ἡ) γραφή, often occurring in the plural, (τῆς) γραφῆς, which literally means “writing(s).” It would have been considered to have spiritual authority in the context of first century Judaism.

So we can choose, if we wish, to accept that the Old Testament is indeed ‘God-breathed’. The interesting thing about this phrase is what else we know to be God-breathed. Namely, Adam.

The interesting thing about Adam, of course, is that Adam (should he even have existed) is not perfect. He sins. He messes up. And it is through messed up God-breathed people that a God-breathed collection of writings, decided upon as ‘Scripture’ by a council in the 4th Century AD that we are interpreting the history of our faith. Perhaps the time has come to examine this bold assumption.

Myth Two: The Bible is Consistent

Having taken away the idea that the Bible is unlike any other source (i.e. inspired outside of fallible human context) we must investigate the possibility that the Bible is erroneous.

There are two ideas I would like to outline here as examples. Firstly, the Old Testament military victories. Secondly, the Gospels.

The Old Testament:
There are many stories of military victories for the Israelites in the Old Testament. These have been shown in various historical studies to be both false and true, depending on who you believe. That’s not the interesting question. The interesting question lies in the fact that during OT times, it was normal to exaggerate military victories, to tell your side of the story as though God was always on your side. If you didn’t, that was just… well… weird.

So do those stories need to be literal? No.
Do the accounts of Jesus’ need to be literal? Maybe.
Is it okay for some parts of the Bible to be taken ‘literally’ and others not? Of course.

The New Testament Gospels
In the Gospels there are varying accounts of different parts of Jesus’ ministry, some of which are widely believed to be copied by each other.

Is there anything wrong with this?

Do we take Alistair Campbell’s Downing Street Diaries and say that everything in them must be false if it doesn’t add up with Blair’s “A Journey”? No, we use our intellect to deduce what has happened by reading in between the lines. Instead of suspending our beliefs, as fierce loyalists would seek to do, we instead engage with what is presented to us and come to conclusions about what happened.

I submit that we can do the same with the gospels. It doesn’t have to add up, make sense, be in the same order, say the same thing. What matters is the message beneath.

Some Alternatives

The consequence of these myths is that we end up with an idea that the Bible has an authority almost on a par with God himself, and becomes in an almost Douglas Adams-esque fashion, the “fourth person of the trinity”. If we affirm this plausible inerrancy, we reject the need for faith. When we affirm inerrancy ,we ascribe perfection to the creation rather than to the Creator. When we affirm inerrancy, we create an idol fashioned out of the same need for certainty and control that drove Adam and Eve to snatch divinity away from God.

Perhaps then the ‘Word of God’ is something else.
Perhaps it is the words of Jesus, as outlined in the gospels?
Perhaps it is simply Jesus himself, as suggested by the opening of the gospel of John?
Perhaps it is the hands of feet of Jesus, as the Church?
Perhaps it is not verbatim, but instead a sentiment, an idea, an expression of love?

Perhaps we can believe in the Word of God not simply because it is written but because we have seen and experienced it being lived out, and that living out makes so much more sense to us than words on a page. Perhaps then, we are the word of God?

In the gospel according to John, Jesus says that he is “in the world but not of the world”. Or does he? He actually says “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it”. Which is different. But what’s important and interesting is that we’ve let it become something of popular culture to suggest the he said my first quotation.

The reason I think this is interesting is because often as Christians I think we’re more interested in thriving in our own bespoke, specific subculture than we are in existing within the subculutres of the world around us.

What do I mean by that? Well, look at the way that Christianity expresses itself today. At the two “extreme” ends of the spectrum of beliefs and practices are a penchant for tolerance and liberalism that water down Christianity into some nice thoughts and feelings; and at the other end a tendency towards a way of being which is so far removed from non-religious folks it is almost unrecognizable. Take for example high Catholic mass or a laser light and smoke machine church concert/service. Both are really, really weird – even when the latter is trying to be “relevant” and is just totally missing the point.

That’s not to say that Christianity is ever going to feel particularly familiar to those alien to it. Many people I share my faith with do not consider much of my worldview to make much sense. They disagree with various fundamental principles that lay beneath it. What I’m getting at here is that we’ve made it worse for ourselves by spending more time on our subcultures than on learning to connect with those who are different to ourselves.

Of course, you could argue that to try and connect with those around us is to in some way dilute our faith, to compromise our position, to rob ourselves of the holiness of our born-again faith (holy being of course a set-apartness; set apart from the world for God). Yet, Jesus came into this world from a place of absolute holiness and had a body which defecated, urinated, vomited, cried, hurt, injured and ultimately died. So if we’re following Jesus’ lead, we should be prepared to go to places which are uncomfortable and compromising, too.

I’m not saying we should open Christian brothels or start Christian wars (we’ve been there before, and that wasn’t too good was it?) or even find Christian ways to be consumers (CCM, anyone?). I’m saying that we should find a better way forward than the world or the Church as it currently stands.

In the passage quoted above, Jesus is, in my view, saying that we should live our lives fully as humans, recognising that we are in the Earth, we are here, we are a part of this existence. But we should also recognise that there is so much more. There. Is. More. God is Good. God is Love. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and so on.

And so what does a ‘better way forward’ look like? I think it’s something like this: Instead of indulging in our religious practices or spending every night of the week helping out in some “church” capacity or shutting ourselves off from the world and technology, or constantly obsessing about being as ethical as possible (that’s where I’m most guilty), we should prioritize those who aren’t yet familiar with the vast, wonderful love of God. We should be willing to take our faith to culture, not persuade people to drop their culture for our faith.

That means taking “Church” to places we wouldn’t normally want to. That means accepting the best kind of community on an estate might be in the pub. It means enjoying going running on a Sunday morning instead of belting out hymns; because that’s what our friends do. But instead of getting too drunk for our own good or competing the hell out of it, we can simply enjoy a good drink and share in life together; or keep ourselves fit, healthy and focused.

It means instead of shunning technology we can use technology in a healthy way. It means instead of avoiding anything that isn’t carbon neutral or fair trade we can lament the brokenness of neo-liberal trade. It means recognising the vast complexity of the world around us and accepting that narrow religion is never going to show the love that we know God has for us to those who can’t yet see it.

We need to make sure we are well and truly in the world, even if we choose not to follow in all of its’ footsteps.

I was having dinner with some friends earlier this week discussing the often judgmental Evangelical culture in America, and one of them – my friend Chris – remarked that one of the reasons that the church is in such a bad state and has these kinds of views is down to “not discipling people properly for hundreds of years”.

I think he’s right. For a very long time the established “Church” simply told people “this is how things are, this is what you have to do, get on with it, or suffer the consequences”. So people did – and when the printing press and the Reformation arrived, the access to source materials only made things worse.

Another of my friends says that “the greatest heresies come out of home groups”. I don’t wish to cast judgement on every conversation in every home group ever, but it seems quite plausible that without good accountability, in the absence of good teaching all kinds of ideas could emerge – from the prosperity gospel God who blesses people with riches, to the vending machine God who answers every prayer with a “yes” or a “no”.

Conservative churches have, to their credit, tried to find a solution to the problem: they tend to have fairly solid structures in place for leadership and accountability, and for group discipleship. This means that people learn regularly from one another, from scripture and from their leaders.

The problem is, as anyone who has read this blog before knows, I don’t agree with conservative theology. So having a well established factory for Conservative Evangelical Christians isn’t, in my view, a solution. Not least because I think some of the heresies (I’m accusing orthodoxy of heresy? the shoe truly is on the other foot!) that rot away the core of the Church are embellished in Evangelical subculture.

The “liberal” tradition has the opposite problem – in an effort to remaining open and inclusive to all, it often sidelines discipleship and structure as “restrictive” and “unhelpful”. Yet, as another friend put to me recently – and I couldn’t agree more – Liberalism has more to offer than simply being a “refugee camp for ex-Evangelicals”.

So I want to suggest that there’s a third way. We can be Liberal in our faith and yet learn and grow to be more like Jesus each day. I’m sure many liberals reading this will be saying “Yes, I already do that”. I’m sure many do, and I’m sure some do not – much as with those in Conservative groups. I suppose what I am trying to say is that there is, in my experience, often a lack of accountability and intentionality within the Liberal tradition – and a lack of mysticism and experiential discipleship in the Conservative tradition.

The key in achieving this and remaining liberal is, in my view, teaching people how to know God – not teaching people what to know. And with that firmly in mind, I would argue that we need the following ways of thinking about what discipleship is, in order to grow and thrive as a community of Christians:

Accountability structure – having someone that we are are “accountable” to is invaluable. In the conservative tradition this is caricatured as a “telling off” session where sins are confessed and then absolved by prayer with an intention to change. Sound familiar? We haven’t really moved on from ancient Catholicism. What does a more liberal structure look like? I think it involves having someone we can talk with about our struggles, concerns, thoughts, ideas, plans – someone who can remind us what we said last time and ask whether we have moved towards or away from God.

Rhythm and routine – I touched on this in my previous post, but to summarise – having a routine helps us to find and make time to listen to, speak to and follow God. I don’t think being “liberal” precludes anyone from not being lazy about their intentions. But it does mean that we can have grace and flexibility in the way we approach this topic!

Mystical Discipleship (knowing God well) – often we carry our cultural (heresy!) assumptions about how to interact with God into our faith – we assume things about hands being together to pray, God being in the sky, etc. Yet we can often believe those things aren’t necessary/right/helpful at the same time. I think it’s important that we learn to experience God – whether that’s in song, in silence, in meditation, in doing, in communicating – I don’t think it matters how; as long as it works for you.

Theological Discipleship (knowing about God well) – that is, having a good understanding of who the God we are interacting with is. If we do not describe God then we leave God to simply be an experience, an event. In naming God and in explaining God, we give ourselves something to grasp – and something for others to grasp, too.

Biblical Discipleship (knowing the Bible well) – In order to know about God well, we need to know the stories of God in the first place.

Academic Discipleship (knowing about the Bible well) – of course, this is where I believe the majority of conservative errors creep in. There are a great many assumptions about the truths contained in the Bible that have developed because of a particular course of thinking that has stuck. We need, as liberals, to think well about the Bible and to know well how to understand it – that means understanding the context of its texts. In doing so, we can learn that it really is possible to bring together the concepts of homosexuality, women in leadership, and so on – with sound scriptural knowledge.

Personal Discipleship (knowing ourselves well) – this involves taking time to keep check on our own, secret, thought life – and the way in which we behave. Jesus talks about it being what comes out from inside that matters. So, whatever we believe, it is important to know ourselves well. I’ve borrowed this from counseling – the better we know ourselves, the more likely we are to be happy and to be able to change that which we are not happy about.

Interpersonal Discipleship (knowing others well) – of course, it is not all about us. Life involves interacting with other people too, and we need to be good at people! Jesus was a people person (and arguably an introvert, too!) and we’re seeking to better understand how to live as he did.

Those are just some starter thoughts – but I do think that those of us who now find ourselves, often as recovering Evangelicals, in the Liberal tradition – can find ourselves feeling without discipleship, and without structure. As I’ve outlined above. I don’t think that needs to be the case. If we begin with Mystical Discipleship, and then help one another to understand what it is we are experiencing, we can build a framework, a way of seeing the world, which is both inclusive to all and helpful in enabling us to grow closer to God.